September 30, 2022
Windows -- ghostscript
If you pull a postscript file into Notepad and then select File--Print,
it will print, but you will see endless pages of postscript, not the
rendered postscript you desire.
Ghostscript is a postscript translator (but translator to what?) and is
available for windows.
I do a search on ghostscript for windows and find it on ghostscript.com
I see Ghostscript 10.0.0 for Windows 64 bit via a AGPL license.
This yields a gs1000w64.exe file. I run this, agree to let software from
Artifex make changes to my system. It installs to:
C:\Program Files\gs\gs10.0.0
Now from the command line I can run it as "gswin64c". Some people make an alias
to this (and there is also gswin64.exe).
Printer driver
I now am reading that Windows at one time supported three "flavors" of printer drivers,
PostScript, Unidrv and XPSDrv. What do I have? Can I just install and/or enable a
postscript driver? This might be worth digging into. The question always is whether
I am getting a driver that is driving a printer that expects postscript, or whether I
am getting a driver that will accept postscript as input.
GSprint and GSview
I routinely use "gv" on my linux system, and apparently GSview is something similar
that runs on windows. So let's give this a try.
I'll note that the above page shows all of the following:
- Ghostscript - a postscript and PDF renderer
- GhostPCL - a PCL5/PCL XL (PXL) renderer
- GhostXPS - a XPS renderer
The following tells me that GSPRINT is part of the GSview package (or once was anyhow).
I can download gsv50w64.exe from the Ghostgum site.
I run it, give permission, and it installs into c:\program files\ghostgum
It tells me that the installation fails, but the files are there in ghostgum\gsview,
including gsprint.exe. It did say something about needing ghostscript up to version 9.99,
but not 10.0 -- maybe that is it.
When I run gsprint it says "you must use -ghostscript"
Redmon
This is some kind of tool, curiously distributed with gsprint, that does port redirection.
I have seen it mentioned several times when searching this windows postscript printer business.
It bears further looking into. Perhaps people are bypassing windows drivers entirely and
sending output from ghostscript right to the printer?
Have any comments? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org